


Jewel of the Hukou

by Morphogen



Category: Independence Day (1996)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-27
Updated: 2015-09-27
Packaged: 2018-04-17 10:41:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4663578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morphogen/pseuds/Morphogen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five years after the saucers fell, Earth retains its independence, but all is not well in America.  A military government, propped up by fears of telepathic subversion, confines the people of the devastated inner cities in an endless quarantine, or "hukou", where they struggle uneasily with the aliens' legacy.  Now one tourist has chosen to visit Chicago's hukou, seeking the unique treasure that he believes lies undiscovered in the wreckage of the alien vessel.</p><p>Note: I've only written a small portion, perhaps the first chapter, so far, but thought I'd post just to see if I get any interesting comment.  I should add that, despite having seen it at some point, I have absolutely no recollection of ID2, nor do I know what ID3 is, so at least at this stage in the writing I'm trying to ignore their existence. ;P</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. For a Hukou, This is Paradise

The patchwork sign by the transit pavilion buzzed. "hukou PHOTO", it announced in dim, mostly red letters. A green and a blue 'u' had been spliced together with the others by some enterprising soul picking through the rubble of the shattered city. Burr looked wryly at one of the translations on the laminated poster board beside it: "照片 «hukou»", the Chinese version read, as if the word were untranslatably American.

After pausing to survey the guides, most of them leaning listlessly against the front, sides, and back of the sign, Burr approached the black man at one end. "Gregory Price?", he inquired.

The young man took in a breath, but never had the chance. "I am Gregory Price," an older man called from the far end of the group. He held out his internal passport. "Don't be discouraged, Samir. Someone will come," he told his comrade in arms as he paused for Burr to inspect the document.

"I'm sorry," Burr said. "I'm not very good with faces..."

Price touched his shoulder. "You should not say such things in front of this rabble. This is a dangerous neighborhood, and they might think they can rob you and get away with it!" He flashed them a smile. "Besides, they printed this thing in Springfield from my old Illinois state ID and brought it in on a truck. I was almost as young as Samir when the original picture was taken."

Joking or not, Price's touch seemed to urge Burr to get walking before the conversation continued.

"How was your trip in?", he asked.

Burr shrugged. "Bureaucratic."

"It will be a lot more difficult for you getting out, believe me! They want five biometrics, and they never have all five scanners working at once. If they did ... they'd think it was suspicious. But it only takes one kind for a drone to shoot you."

"But why do they bother checking people coming in at all?"

"You might not believe it, but for a hukou, this is paradise. Most cities, you're stuck in a ring of fenced-in rubble with a saucer in the middle." Samir waved a hand at invisible southeastern scenery. "Chicago was always a racist town - they had huge areas of empty, fenced off, or blighted and forgotten land on the South Side they were eager to get rid of, together with a lot of people like me. So when they set up the Temporary Quarantine they put a lot of us behind it. More than twice the area of the others. Best of all, there's the lake - international border, international shipping. If you pay the right taxes and get the right inspections, you can import things that most other hukous never see. And if you pay enough..."

Even Burr knew better than to finish that thought. There weren't as many drones and mikes outside the hukou, but he was no stranger to trailed off sentences.

Burr looked out at the shattered alien ship that loomed above the cornices of the townhouses to the east. Sunlight glittered on the northern rim of the great fracture that had opened up when its burning shell crashed to the earth. "Are we going into the Cleft today?"

"The Cleft is bad this week", Price replied. "The Feds are trying to collect an okunium shipment from the miners, and the Locals are demanding a big relief increase. If the Locals don't shoot you, that's reason enough for the Feds to do it. I managed to reserve seats on the survey chopper - I hope that works with your budget?"

"it doesn't matter. When I find what I'm looking for, it will be worth it. Do you want the money now?"

"No." Price held out his palm at him. "Like I said, this can be a dangerous place, and I don't want to be robbed with it. Or to have someone get nervous I took their money and ask the Feds for a drone strike before I finish in the restroom." Price smiled, but with a knowing look. "You keep the money out of sight for now, and I'll keep you safe."

The pale, gangly stranger with the Zuckerberg business-casual attire and the short, spry mixed-race guide in the dashiki robe finished the block's walk from Quarantine Enforcement to the Tube station. As inquisitive passengers looked down at them, Burr looked up at the station skeptically. "This is safe?"

"It's the oldest functioning Tube in the world. Five years without a catastrophic failure. And as they say", pointing to a battered sign, "only 6 minutes to the Loop!"

It was also the only functioning Tube in the world. Burr knew the history. After the alien attacks, a billionaire philanthropist had graciously donated the components of his scale model prototype transport system to rebuild Chicago's shattered public transportation. The bottom had dropped out of the market anyway. But it was less heartening to look up at the patchwork of support pylons and supporting struts that bridged the gaps in an ancient set of elevated train tracks set on massive rusted pillars. "Hurry!", Price said, "The train is coming!" Swallowing hard, Burr made himself run up the steps.

Commerce in the hukou was strictly on a cash basis. People said alien computer viruses were hidden in undiscovered alien machinery and could corrupt computers, or maybe it was the radiation, or air polluted with stable transuranic elements. Whatever it was, computers seemed to go down too often. Flash drives and hard disks remained unreliable. The network was cut during the Quarantine and there'd been no white market connectivity since. He was surprised to see Price pull out his own precounted cash to pay, but before he could demur the rail officials had helped him into a car. It was only as they crammed the door shut on him that he realized how small the railcar truly was.

Burr called out for Price, but the sound was drowned out by the noise of the compressor that roared in the tube ahead of him even as other passengers continued to board. Burr was trapped, alone, deafened, in a tiny compartment tucked within a windowless steel tube. Just as the waiting became unendurable, it was replaced by powerful lurches in unexpected directions, with redoubled noise. He struggled to get his hands over his ears, fighting back a wave of nausea.

At last the train came to a stop and he made his escape. Price emerged a moment later. With a wry grin, he said, "They count the six minutes from the time the train leaves, not the time you get in. We probably could have waited a bit."

As one assault ended, another began. "What the Christ is that smell?", Burr demanded.

"Welcome to scenic Nimsiki Express. After the city waste treatment was disrupted, we diverted the local sewers into the below-grade expressway. There was too much rubble for us to restore the road, but sewage flows through it. Mostly. It goes somewhere under the saucer, north along the old Chicago River. Someday someone should figure out where it all ends up. But it would be best to continue our tour, don't you think?"

They hastened to depart along the bridge that linked elevated Tube to surface street. Burr tried not to look into the mire that clogged the groove in the earth beneath him. "Where do we go from here?" he croaked.

"You're booked at the Monadnock tonight. All new hotel, all converted from office space after the invasion. Tourists like the historic load bearing stone walls. The alien pulse did strange things to the steel buildings that survived, sometimes they creak, sometimes they fall, but the Monadnock will be around for centuries. Very expensive, but you ordered the best."

"But first... how about Navy Pier?" Price's eyes veritably twinkled.

It was a few blocks to check in at the Monadnock, where Price carried the luggage four stories up to the room. There was electric power and an elevator stood at the ready, but no one seemed in a rush to use it. Burr followed along, winded, just in time for Price to show him the luggage on the bed, lock the door and hand him the key.

The violence of the aliens' attack still marked the streets between the Monadnock and the shore. The wrecks had long since been sold for scrap, but there was little money for roadwork. In each street hand painted diagonal yellow lines restricted traffic to a single lane of sparse traffic that avoided the roughest terrain. Pedestrians stood around in the remainder chatting, or set up tables. There was a food cart or outdoor restaurant tables every fifty feet. Barred from the internet, residents clustered around short-lived, smuggled tablets pre-loaded with software, or indulged in the sort of archaic conversation that must have preceded the electronic age.

After twenty minutes a sign indicated Whitmore Avenue. Burr gave it a funny look. "This is the first street I've seen with bumper to bumper traffic, street lights, even a Walk sign. Why do you call it after the traitor who nuked Houston?"

Price smiled and pointed a finger to the sky. "No drones here! No microphones! The Locals watch over us. You can speak your heart."

Burr said, "I don't know about that, but seriously, why?"

"Don't they tell you anything outside the hukou?" For once Price looked displeased. "Whitmore was the one who fought back. He was the one who stopped the aliens."

"What about the military? Secretary Nimsiki?"

"Nimsiki? Whitmore fired that idiot before it even started. Called him a snivelling weasel. The man had advance knowledge of the aliens and kept it secret. We have it all on recordings."

"Do you deny Whitmore was penetrated by alien telepathy?"

"Might have been. But alien telepathy isn't everything they say. Nimsiki just says things to create panic and keep the Committee in office."

"I don't want to make trouble," Burr said. "I'm trying to do something important here. There's too much to lose. I can't get into conspiracy theories that sound like alien apologism. The Unrepealable Amendment is pretty clear about that. If I get debriefed I want to have a clear conscience."

"Nice thing about the hukou. No debriefers."

"That you know of..."

"We have a way to keep them at bay. I'll show you at carnival."

"I have to face one on the way out."

"Then you should find this interesting."


	2. It's Not The First Time

Pain. _Start at the beginning._ Funnel cakes, moonshine, Bob Marley singing "only ourselves can free our minds." Laughter. Free public strippers, who turned out to be cheap and (locally) legal sex workers, had he been so inclined, but Price urging him along. _To the tent, and the thing under it._ Tom shuddered.

_Burr. He should call me Burr._ But the time for formality had been rudely ended. _"Thomas. Thomas Burr, Ma'am." His memory of third grade seemed like yesterday. Like an hour ago. The old-fashioned chalk dust and the heavy Venetian blinds of the converted Catholic school, the awkward feeling of the first day in a new class, the urgent urgings of his parents fresh in his ears to try as hard as he can so he can stay in the magnet school._

But wasn't he also Gregory Price? Couldn't he remember the feel of his deep brown fingers gripping the lectern as he laid out his plan for a South Side library? Internet, music and video collections, classes and other non-traditional offerings? That part of him was fading, but how was it a part at all?

_What the hell?_ No response. It occurred to him to say it. "WHAT THE HELL?" His voice sounded loud in the dim room. He started up from the chair where he'd been deposited.

Price wore his usual grin. "Now you know how debriefing works."

Burr did not appear convinced. "What the hell is this? What does it have to do with debriefing?"

"You're more used to having it with midazolam. But they don't tell you that. Once used mostly for lethal injection and date rape, it's the drug that keeps you from forming new memories. So you don't remember how they debrief you."

Price paused, but Burr wasn't following him.

"You _do_ remember? Under the tent?"

Price had led him there, he remembered. "Biggest show of all!", he'd said. The giant Ferris wheel that once stood on Navy Pier had fallen nearly intact during the Pulse, and some enterprising souls had leveraged it fully out of the narrow slip of water north of the pier, spanning the gap to the parkland north of it. There were rows of seating all around the edge. Nothing but water underneath. Then something had moved beneath the surface...

Tom curled up, striking an awkward fetal pose in his chair. _Something_.

"Jesus Fuck! You _contaminated_ me?" Burr leapt up in a rage. Were he a violent man, he would have started punching.

"It's not the first time." Price held up his hand. "You've been debriefed four times, that I can tell, and every time they did the same thing. They just don't tell you."

Burr's rage inexplicably evaporated. He felt like he could still remember using that very voice to make similar arguments for education resources in poor neighborhoods of Chicago. He realized that somehow he had something of Price in his head, and what he knew was trustworthy.

"You see, _they_ keep their memories a secret, but believe me, they don't keep anything they get from you a secret. There are no drugs for the agents when they go in a session with you. And it all goes in the database as fast as they can dictate."

"And that thing..."

"Yes. It's one of the Dreadheads, out of its casing, slapped in one of our own. It can share minds with anyone it's near. We make it share with them all. For Nimsiki's government this is interrogation for state security. For us... we try to link our community together. Make people empathize with one another. It isn't perfect, but this carnival exhibit has become something of an institution."

"But they're locusts, driven by pure hate... they made Whitmore nuke Houston while leaving the aliens alone," Burr protested.

Greg laughed. "You should have known that was a cock and bull story _before_ our little chat. They aren't really that powerful. With a little will you can push back against their compulsion. And with a little training you can control what you share and what you don't. Which is what matters, because I didn't need an alien telepath to tell me you were looking for something more than the paltry Federal commission on recovered Saucer artifacts." He winked at Tom, and perhaps in respect for some of Tom's feelings inside himself, did not boast further about what he'd learned.

"Besides, our Dreadhead is pithed, just like the ones the Federals use. Rigged up to life support, but otherwise lifeless. It has all the brain centers for telepathy, but there's nothing left in its head to say. We bring it out of the water, people get linked. Lower it back down, and normalcy prevails."

"But we're not in the tent. What happened?" He was afraid to ask yet how many others had been in his mind, or what they were doing.

"I'm afraid you had a touch of a seizure. It's not very common. I think the Federal sessions made you more vulnerable. Maybe at some level you were reliving some of those, even if I couldn't sense them. There's no telling what they do to you in there."

Burr had just enough of the taste of Price's mind left in him to know the man was _extrapolating_ , which is to say, he had no idea. "I think I'd better get back to the hotel." To sleep, perchance to dream as himself.

"I'll go with you," Price said. It was dark and Tom wasn't sure of the way back.


End file.
